A well-known and popular citizen of Hohenwald, Tennessee, was Raymond Crawford Hooper, who was twenty years in the service of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway Company and for the last twelve years had charge of that company’s interests at Hohenwald as station agent, during which time he so ordered his course as to win the high esteem of his acquaintances and to be accounted one of the sterling men of his community. He came from one of Tennessee’s pioneer families and was a son of one the state’s loyal defenders of the Southern cause during the Civil War. The originator of the family in Tennessee was John Hooper, the great-grandfather of Raymond C., who came from North Carolina and settled on Sam’s Creek in Cheatham County, where he continued his occupation as a farmer. He had married before leaving North Carolina. One of his sons was Jesse Hooper, the grandfather of our subject, who spent his entire life in Cheatham County, Tennessee, and was one of its most prominent men. The latter also was a farmer and was an extensive slave holder. His son, Jesse Owen Hooper, the father of Raymond C., was born in Cheatham County, August 10, 1834, and grew to manhood in that county, receiving there his schooling. As a youth imbued with the loyal ardor so marked among the sons of Tennessee he ran away from home to join the Confederate ranks for service in the Civil War and became a member of Capt. Charles May’s Company in the Fiftieth Tennessee Regiment. He served until near the close of the war and most of the time was a fifer in the fife and drum corps. After the war he returned to Cheatham County, was married there and shortly afterward removed to Dickson County, where he took up a farm in District No. 6, near Charlotte. Later he was engaged in the mercantile business at Charlotte for a number of years and spent his closing years there retired. He was a staunch Democrat in political views, and fraternally was a Mason. He was a member of the Christian Church, while his wife was affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The latter, who was Miss Mary Catherine Cullem as a maiden, was born in Cheatham County in 1836 and departed life in 1882. To these parents were born eight children, of whom our subject was second in birth and is the only one now living.
Raymond Crawford Hooper was born at Charlotte, Dickson County, Tennessee, August 20, 1869, and received his education in the public schools of that town and at the Dickson Normal School. He first took up responsible duties as a clerk at Dickson, Tennessee, but after two years of that employment he entered upon railroad work as a brakeman on the Centerville Branch of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad. Sometime later he took up telegraphy and after he had mastered it he was appointed agent at Kimmins, Tennessee. That was in 1899. After twenty-one months of service there he was transferred to Hohenwald, Tennessee, where he remained twelve years, the whole of his twenty years of railroad service having been for the same company. He was also interested in agriculture and owned a farm in Lewis County and also one in Wayne County, this state.
On January 15, 1903, Mr. Hooper was united in marriage to Miss Annie Laura Downing, daughter of S. W. Downing, who is engaged in farming and in the saw-mill business in Wayne County. To Mr. and Mrs. Hooper were born four children, Mary, Maggie, Jesse Owen and Raymond, the latter two of whom are deceased. Mr. Hooper was a loyal supporter of the Democratic Party and an enthusiastic worker in its behalf. Fraternally he was a member of Dickson Lodge, No. 468, Free and Accepted Masons, and of Nashville Consistory No. 21 of Scottish Rite Masons, and was a charter member and past chancellor commander of George D. Smith Lodge No. 182, Knights of Pythias, at Hohenwald. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, as is also his wife, and in its faith he passed away January 4, 1913.
Source: Hale, Will T, and Dixon L. Merritt. A History of Tennessee and Tennesseans: The Leaders and Representative Men in Commerce, Industry and Modern Activities. Chicago: Lewis Pub. Company, 1913. Volume 5.
